2019-2020 Season

There's no denying that we will be down this year, compared to last year, from both a starter and bench perspective. We're losing 2 guaranteed draft picks, one probable draft pick, and a guy who was looked at as an NBA prospect for most of his career here.

The success of the last two seasons IS showing in recruiting, but it's showing a year too late. Our 2020 class is shaping up to be legit (multiple 5*'s), and people are suggesting we will oversign (which means Barnes will be telling current players to move on). So while this year looks to be a "down" year, the future looks bright, especially if Barnes can continue recruiting at a high level. I'm looking at this year as more of a "bridge" year than a "down" year.

Fulkerson is a perfectly capable SEC bench player. Pons is not, but his development this offseason could change that.

Lastly, I don't think Barnes being paid top 5 money as a coach necessarily means he's a top 5 coach. It reminds me of last year when Kirk Cousins became the highest paid player in the NFL. No one was claiming he was the best player in the NFL, and everyone recognized that other players would pass him as they signed their own new deals. This just seems to be how these things work nowadays.

 

Referencing a media vote for preseason is ridiculous. A preseason vote by the media has zero value, much less using some 3 years time frame. Use an actual result if you want to dazzle people with your perceptive abilities you think no else possesses. Otherwise, year 5 is a perfectly reasonable time frame to have stabilized a program to a level in which a tournament berth is a reasonable expectation.

Or, is there some other level of expectation you would be so kind as to tell us with your greater understanding of perspective than anyone else's?

 

No coaches, media or fans thought we had much of a team at that time. Your favorite coach Barnes and staff surprised everybody with development.
Unexpected departures can set a developing program back. We arent Duke, ky or mich st with a sturdy program with plans for players to leave early and have their spots ready since kids were soph in HS.
Expectation is to develop them and make the tourney as ive said a dozen times. Perspective is the ability to see where we were a short time ago and understand losing at one time, Bone, Grant, Admiral and Alexander, guys who went undefeated vs KY at home and beat them more than they lost, is a problem and difficult to replace.

 

he admitted he had no perspective.

 

I don’t hold his first 2 years against him. Cuonzo nuked the place on his way out and Hart nuked it again hiring Tyndall. We had 2 straight years of thrown together late recruiting classes.

I expect 2019-20 will be disappointing but it is what it is. I don’t think it’s giving him a pass either. Programs with more long-term stability than we’ve had have those years but they follow them with rebounds and that’s what he’ll have to do here.

I expect if he’s here 10 years it’ll look like a sample of the other 30 he’s been a coach. Solid and consistent at least. I’ll take that for a while after the Cuonzo and Tyndall crap.

I don’t really care how much we’re paying him. It was worth a premium to not have to hit the reset button again. I don’t care what y’all think of Barnes, the odds of actually upgrading on him are low.

 

There is your definition of perspective. Some have it and some don't.

 

The alternative was letting him go. Had we done that, what top tier coach takes this job, knowing the players he was losing and those he'd be left with? That also likely means a reset on recruiting, so wave goodbye to the VERY solid class we likely bring in for 2020 with Barnes.

 

All legit and fair, Indy.

I disagree that it’s “showing” in recruiting - we’re in on a bunch of high-profile guys, but so are a lot of others, too. But being in a recruit’s Top 8 is a damned far ways away from their playing for your team. Hopefully, we land them all, but it’s more likely that we’re going to continue to maybe land one above average player and a few role players each year, if history is any good indicator of future performance. But, I get your point - you have to be in on better players before you can start to land better players. So, we’ve got that, and let’s now see if he can actually land them. Admittedly, I’m skeptical, at the very best.

But still, shouldn’t a sizable uptick in recruiting be automatically and reasonably expected of the Top 3 highest paid coach now in his FIFTH (5th) season, and who is coming off of back-to-back Sweet 16’s, who was ranked #1 for two months of the previous season, winning 19 straight games in the process, and who is on the cusp of putting three players in the NBA draft? How could recruiting not be better, by default, that is, unless you just purposefully didn’t recruit them.

And which leads me to one of my biggest frustrations and most persistent concerns with Bruin Barnes...his dislike / disdain / unwillingness / lack of desire / lack of effort for recruiting, and which isn’t merely some message board rumor, but one which his own assistant not only admitted, but publicly...on the radio....on purpose...and then tried to defend. Frankly, that’s utterly inexcusable horse shit, no matter what we’re paying him.

We are never going to have a viable chance for this program to take the next step up if we don’t recruit and consistently land top-tier talent, and similar to what those other programs at the next higher levels above us not only do, but regularly, each year.

Period. Hard stop.

While everyone was understandably lauding Bruin Barnes for his having turned a bunch of 250+ players into last year’s team...and rightfully so. But I think it’s entirely fair to also wonder and ask what this team’s ceiling could have been last year, had his efforts at developing players been applied to Top 100 players, instead. It’s much quicker and easier to rise above your station when you don’t start in a 100 foot hole. We’ll never know how much more we could have gotten, because he didn’t sign any Top 100 players.

And, the fact also remains that Bruin Barnes and his staff essentially took 2 (TWO!) of their first 3 years completely off in recruiting, and which is exactly how we ended up being forced to make due with a grad transfer two seasons ago (and who was a complete bust at TN), and are still scrambling to find others, even now. Worse, it’s why we’re now staring down the barrel of next season and where we’ll have to rely on major minutes and big-time production from Fulk, Yves Pons (who probably wouldn’t start for many JUCO teams, tbh) and an unproven European transfer who may not even be eligible next season - and this, following on the heels of the legit, unquestioned and many successes of the last two seasons, and in Bruin Barnes’ 5th (FIFTH!) season.

I’m neither asking Tennessee to magically become Duke / Kansas / UNC, nor that Barnes becomes a Calipari-like clone on the recruiting trail. But there is absolutely no reason why he cannot or shouldn’t be expected to produce higher, better and more consistent success on the recruiting trail than he’s thus far shown. Or hell, some certainty that he’s even willing and wanting to expend the effort that such even somewhat requires, so as to meet that exceedingly low-bar.

That I, a diehard Tennessee fan, has any legitimate cause to question Bruin Barnes DESIRE to recruit at the highest level - of which there are many, as detailed here - is so stupidly inexcusable as to be laughably comical, if it weren’t so damned terribly sad and pathetic.

TL;DR: Until Bruin Barnes shows the consistent desire and ability to land a much better and higher quality of recruits...the Sweet 16 is our tip-top ceiling...we’ll struggle to stay even there...and he’s satisfied with that, and just collecting a paycheck. A big, fat, third highest, retirement plan golden parachute paycheck.

 

Martin went 63-41 and a sweet 16 in 3 years. Barnes went 57-44 and a round of 32 in 3 years.

For perspective.

 

I honestly don’t understand this, at all, but will try to.

“We had 2 straight years of thrown together late recruiting classes.”

Who’s fault is that, if not Barnes’?

We are a full four (4) years removed from Donnie Tyndall. Four. Years. Enough time for members of Barnes’ first class to have already graduated. Hell, I guess we’re lucky and should be thankful to have made the tourney, given how DeVoe’s tenure ended.

And then this...

You: “I expect 2019-20 will be disappointing but it is what it is.”
Also You: “I don’t think it’s giving him a pass either.”

Wut? Next season (Barnes’ fifth!) will be a disappointment...but it just is what it is...and not because of anything that Barnes could have done to prepare, prevent or work to mitigate the loss of those players, but utterly failed to do...but because “it is what it is”, instead. The gods didn’t smile on us, or something, I guess? We got a bad draw in the random recruiting lotto?

If you really don’t believe that this isn’t exactly “giving him (Barnes) a pass...” I honestly question if you understand what it means to give someone a pass, JQK. This is about as airtight of a real-world example of pass-giving as you may ever see.

How exactly do you think that those other programs actually achieved that greater stability, and which they now enjoy? That you seem to believe that completely random, unpredictable and uncontrollable events just unfold via a luck of the draw is becoming a troubling pattern, but it does help to explain why you don’t hold Barnes responsible. But how can you then be ok with paying him $5M a year, if these events are random and complexly beyond his direct and immediate control?

This post will probably come off as being both more sharply pointed and “at” you than I intend - and I proactively apologize if it does - because attacking you is not at all my aim. But this just doesn’t make sense to me, at all.

But, I do recall that you once said that this is pure entertainment and enjoyment for you, and that you always see it as such, and don’t want or feel the need to delve into the minutiae of shit like this - and maybe that’s the best way to look at things, and how it makes sense, from that perspective.

 

I havent read all the stuff about Barnes recruiting so please link if there is any info. Didnt really follow at Texas but assume he recruited talent. We have 2 5* talented players committed currently.

A question I have is: is Barnes style, religion, whole team baptized, toughness on players, off team requirements, etc a turn off for some players and it 100% is. He definitely doesnt kiss recruits and families asses as his peers. Whether he should is another debate.

Im fine with having a really good recruit each year and filling the rest with moldable pieces (similar to how TTech was built to play this year). Thats how consistent teams and programs can be built. Ballhandlers, shooters and a couple guys to set picks and rebound around an A go to player. Thats how id build it as a program that wont be doing many if any 1 or 2 and dones.

 

I didn’t read all that shit because I’m at work. And your first sentence totally missed what I said. Tyndall’s class and Barnes’ first were the 2 thrown together ones I’m referring to, Tenny.

 

So let’s fire his ass and bring back Cuonzo.

 

not what I am saying. you made it sound like Cuonzo was awful, yet he outperformed Barnes in his tenure here, year to year.

no one is going to try and say Martin is a top 10 coach. yet here we are, saying barnes is. or the best we could get with top 5 money.

 

interesting to go back to 2015-2018 recruiting rankings and see how its worked out. Duke, ky consistently near the top. Others such as UCLA, Texas, Indiana, Vandy, UL, Bama hovering around the top 10 have shit to show for it and multiple coaching changes. Outside of the top few blue bloods who reload, its a crap shoot.

 

Tennessee fans and administrators that ran Counzo off and Dave Hart hiring an NCAA felon.

It's not an excuse any longer, but for Rick's first two years I would say they were legitimate.

 

took 5 seconds to see Martin was a bad coach and scores of 46 and 48 in the same week with 5* Stokes, Mcrae and Jrich on the floor. Talent can overcome coaching in basketball, as it did when they stopped walking the ball up and ran like Stokes told media they wanted to all year.

 

Cuonzo Martin and Rick Barnes aren’t in the same galaxy, whatever you think of Rick Barnes

 

The recruiting success is lagging the on-floor success by a year. We'll see the impact of last season in the November signing period when we land Corey Walker/Keon Johnson/other.

I also think Barnes takes guys he wants to coach at this point in his career. I'm not saying that's a superior approach by any stretch, but the program has definitely stabilized and elevated in the past 4 years.